Movie Review - 'Hitman'

Hitman

Starring Timothy Olyphant, Dougray Scott and Olga Kurylenko
Directed by Xavier Gens
Rated R

Having played the video game Hitman a few years back, I can say that the movie offshoot bears some similarities to the game that fans might enjoy. It's not a direct lift of the original, but it works within that world.

However, you can't just make a video game movie for fans of the video game. And that's where Hitman gets in trouble, because while star Timothy Olyphant does a good job capturing the emotionless killing machine he's made out to be, nearly every other component of the filmmaking in this video game flick is extremely substandard. Poorly constructed, unenergetically paced, sophomorically written and not entirely directed, Hitman fails as a movie that stands on its own.

Though Hitman never gets as silly as a lot of movies of this ilk, it never pushes itself any further than the original concept could take it. Director Xavier Gens relies on the old cinematic standby of having Russian men act irredeemably, either out of their cold villainy or rampant stupidity. One upshot is converted model Olga Kurylenko, the femme fatale, who would make a good Bond girl, particularly back in the era of Soviet espionage.

The action is mostly fine, but it's not most of the movie. Whole scenes are created simply to warrant gunplay, which isn't the best idea, either, but in a way, it's better than having the characters talk it out in the same scene. After all, it is called Hitman.

One note on a movie cliche that needs to be retired. Almost any film with cops or spies or international secret agents throws up a computerized font telling you where the scene you're about to watch takes place. Hitman does it a lot, and does it in ways that absolutely make no sense. For example, rather than just showing us the plane at the airport in Russia, the movie goes ahead and provides a fake Russian name for the airport that is never referenced again. When guys get off planes, we generally understand that it happens at an airport. We don't need more information than that.

Also, we know Moscow is in Russia.

Stop it.

On the whole, there's enough going on in Hitman to entertain a lot of holdover fans from the game, but not nearly enough to create new fans out of what they've slapped together on screen.